NASA Astronaut Janice Voss Dies After Courageous Fight With Cancer

NASA astronaut Janice Voss – a veteran of five spaceflights – passed away overnight after a courageous battle with cancer. She was 55 years old.

An engineering graduate of Purdue University and MIT, Voss was chosen for the astronaut corps in January 1990. She flew on five space shuttle missions from 1993-2000. Over the course of those five missions she logged 49 days in space and travelled nearly 19 million miles, having orbited the Earth 779 times – tying her with the record for the most spaceflights by a woman.

Voss was part of the first shuttle mission to rendezvous with Russia’s MIR space station on STS-63, flown by shuttle Discovery. On her first flight, STS-57 aboard shuttle Endeavour, she helped conduct biomedical and material science experiments in the new Spacehab module – a pressurized laboratory mounted inside the shuttle’s payload bay. Her final mission was flown again on shuttle Endeavour, STS-99 – a flight to the International Space Station as part of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission which mapped over 47 million square miles of the Earth’s surface.

Voss is a veteran of five space shuttle missions, having logged 49 days in space with nearly 19 million miles travelled, having orbited the Earth 779 times - tying her with the record for the most spaceflights by a woman. Photo Credit: NASA

The other two missions she flew on, STS-83 and STS-94, were quite unique in that the crew’s were the same for both of those missions – the only time in the shuttle program’s history that an entire crew launched twice to achieve the same mission. STS-83 was a science mission to be flown by shuttle Columbia, but three days into the flight a problem occurred with one of Columbia’s fuel cells, forcing the crew to return to Earth early. Three months passed before Columbia was ready to fly again, at which time Voss and her crew launched, this time on STS-94, to complete the Microgravity Science Laboratory mission.

“As the payload commander of two space shuttle missions, Janice was responsible for paving the way for experiments that we now perform on a daily basis on the International Space Station,” said Peggy Whitson, chief of the Astronaut Office. “By improving the way scientists are able to analyze their data, and establishing the experimental methods and hardware necessary to perform these unique experiments, Janice and her crew ensured that our space station would be the site of discoveries that we haven’t even imagined.”

STS-94 Payload Commander Janice Voss smiles and gives a thumbs-up as she is assisted into her launch/entry suit in the Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building before launching on shuttle Columbia. Photo Credit: NASA

“During the last few years, Janice continued to lead our office’s efforts to provide the best possible procedures to crews operating experiments on the station today,” Whitson added. “Even more than Janice’s professional contributions, we will miss her positive outlook on the world and her determination to make all things better.”

From 2004-2007 Voss headed the science program for the agency’s Kepler Space Observatory at NASA’s AMES Research Center at Moffett Field, CA. After leaving AMES in 2007 she served as the payload lead in the astronaut office’s space station branch at the johnson Space Center in Houston.

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The NACA Spirit Captured, 1945

In this 1945 photo, test pilots (from left) Mel Gough, Herb Hoover, Jack Reeder, Steve Cavallo and Bill Gray stand in front of a P-47 Thunderbolt. The photo was taken at the then-named Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, which was a research facility for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or the NACA.
The NACA was the main institutional basis for creating NASA in 1958.
On March 3, 1915 – one hundred years ago -- the U.S. Congress established the NACA in order "to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution."
From humble beginnings with a $5000 budget, no paid staff and no facilities, the NACA won the Collier trophy five times. Its researchers made critical contributions to victory in World War II, spawned a world-leading civil aviation manufacturing industry, propelled supersonic flight, supported national security during the Cold War, and laid the foundation for modern air travel and the space age.
Learn more about the 100th anniversary of the founding of the NACA at www.nasa.gov/naca100.
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